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21 " Bei dieser Passage gibt es nur ein einziges Problem: Es stimmt nicht. »Der Mensch« hat keineswegs den Atem angehalten angesichts dieses Kontinents, denn wenn wir uns »den Menschen« als die gesamte Menschheit vorstellen, dann hat »der Mensch« die Gegend schon gekannt, ja bereits seit Zehntausenden von Jahren bewohnt. Die Verwendung von »der Mensch« verrät uns am Ende viel darüber, wen genau der Erzähler als Person anerkennt und von welchem Standpunkt die Geschichte erzählt wird. "
― John Green , The Anthropocene Reviewed
22 " It is May of 2020, and I do not have a brain well suited for this. "
23 " I know the world will survive us - and in some ways it will be more alive. "
24 " How can you regain confidence when you know that confidence is just a varnish painted atop human frailty? "
25 " These days, I can only feel normal when I'm outside. "
26 " There’s a certain way I talk about the things I don’t talk about. Maybe that’s true for all of us. We have ways of closing off the conversation so that we don’t ever get directly asked what we can’t bear to answer. "
27 " We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here. "
28 " To fall in love with the world isn’t to ignore or overlook suffering, both human or otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry and watch the sycamore trees leaf out in June. When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens and tears well in my eyes, I want to look away from feeling. I want to deflect with irony or anything else that will keep me from feeling directly. We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here. "
29 " I'll never again speak to many of the people who loved me into this moment, just as you will never speak to many of the people who loved you into your now. So we raise a glass to them--and hope that perhaps somewhere, they are raising a glass to us. "
30 " You can't see the future coming--not the terrors, for sure, but you also can't see the wonders that are coming, the moments of light-soaked joy that await each of us. "
31 " For me, finding hope is not some philosophical exercise or sentimental notion; it is a prerequisite for my survival. "
32 " I am thoughtful—full of thoughts, all the time, inescapably, exhaustingly. But I am also mindless—acting in accordance with default settings I neither understand nor examine. "
33 " When you have the microphone, what you say matters, even when you're just kidding. "
34 " our obsessive desire to make and have and do and say and go and get—six of the seven most common verbs in English—may ultimately steal away our ability to be, the most common verb in English. "
35 " Humans are not the protagonists of this planet's story. If there is a main character, it is life itself, which makes of earth and starlight something more than earth and starlight. But in the age of the Anthropocene, humans tend to believe, despite all available evidence, that the world is here for our benefit. "
36 " It's no wonder we worry about the end of the world. Worlds end all the time. "
37 " I think it's helpful to know how sunsets work. I don't buy the romantic notion that scientific understanding somehow robs the universe of its beauty, but I still can't find language to describe how breathtakingly beautiful sunsets are--not breathtakingly, actually, but breath-givingly beautiful. All I can say is that sometimes when the world is between day and night, I'm stopped cold by its splendor, and I feel my absurd smallness. You'd think that would be sad, but it isn't. It only makes me grateful. "
38 " When people we love are suffering, we want to make it better. But sometimes - often, in fact - you can't make it better. I'm reminded of something my supervisor said to me when I was a student chaplain: "Don't just do something. Stand there. "
39 " In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant.’ Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. "
40 " We can talk and talk and talk about what the pain is like, but we can never manage to convey what it is. "